Senior Software Engineer, AV Frameworks
About The Position
The Senior Software Engineer will design and deliver foundational communication and runtime components used by autonomous vehicle and robotics applications on vehicles, benches, and in simulation. The role is part of AV Frameworks within AV Platform Core at General Motors, focusing on inter-process communication (IPC), middleware, and developer experience across distributed compute. The work involves C++ systems, Linux, and networking/IPC to provide low-latency messaging, deterministic scheduling, and production-grade reliability at scale. The engineer will develop high-performance IPC and middleware primitives, improve latency, throughput, and determinism, and create developer-facing APIs, tools, and documentation. Platform components should include observability, robust fault handling, and reproducible performance characteristics. The role collaborates with platform OS, drivers, safety, controls, perception, and tooling teams, and contributes to engineering quality through testing, code reviews, performance gates, rollout discipline, mentorship, and design reviews. This role is categorized as hybrid; the selected candidate is expected to report to a specific location at least three times a week or at another frequency directed by their manager. Relocation benefits are available to candidates who qualify under company policy. The position is subject to export control restrictions and requires the successful candidate to be a U.S. Person (U.S. citizen, U.S. permanent resident, asylee, or refugee).
Requirements
- BS/MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent experience.
- 7+ years building systems-level software in modern C++ (C++17/20/23) or Rust on Linux.
- Deep knowledge of concurrency, memory management, lock-free or low-contention patterns, and performance profiling.
- Hands-on experience with IPC/messaging systems and distributed systems fundamentals, including serialization, backpressure, flow control, and QoS.
- Strong understanding of networking, including sockets, TCP/UDP, multicast, NICs, buffers, MTU, packetization, and time synchronization concepts.
- Proficiency with build and CI tooling such as Bazel, Buck, or CMake, test frameworks, and artifact/versioning strategies.
- Successful candidate must be a U.S. Person due to export control restrictions.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with robotics/AV middleware such as ROS 2, DDS, gRPC, ZeroMQ, eCAL, or shared memory IPC.
- Experience with serialization and data technologies such as Protobuf, FlatBuffers, Cap’n Proto, zero-copy techniques, and record/resimulation pipelines.
- Experience with advanced networking/IO such as io_uring, RDMA/PCIe messaging, kernel/bpf-based observability, and packet capture and analysis.
- Experience with real-time Linux and systems constraints, including scheduling, CPU isolation, priority inversion mitigation, and bounded latency.
- Experience with tracing and performance tools such as perf, LTTng, eBPF, and flamegraphs, and defining and enforcing performance SLOs.
- Safety and reliability awareness, including diagnostics, failover, degraded modes, and basic ISO 26262 considerations for software components.
- Python or Go for tooling and integration.
Responsibilities
- Own the design and implementation of high-performance IPC and middleware primitives, including publish/subscribe, shared memory, serialization, discovery, and QoS.
- Improve latency, throughput, and determinism through profiling, tracing, benchmarking, and targeted optimization.
- Build developer-facing APIs, tooling, and documentation to improve ergonomics, correctness, and velocity for internal customers.
- Deliver platform-ready components with metrics, logs, traces, robust fault handling, and reproducible performance characteristics.
- Collaborate with platform OS, drivers, safety, controls, perception, and tooling teams to integrate end-to-end solutions.
- Apply production rigor through code reviews, unit/integration/soak testing, performance and regression gates, and rollout/rollback discipline.
- Mentor engineers, contribute to design reviews, and promote engineering excellence.
Benefits
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- Health Savings Account
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- Retirement savings plan
- Sickness and accident benefits
- Life insurance
- Paid vacation
- Paid holidays
- Incentive pay program based on company performance, job level, and individual performance
- Relocation benefits for candidates who qualify under company policy
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
